uberlife Real Champions series: Hanging out w/ Tamar Weinberg
For all those social media mavens out there, for uberlife’s next Real Champions installment we talked with Digital Marketing specialist, Tamar Weinberg, author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web to gain some insight into how she first started out and went on to carve out a successful career.
What first inspired and motivated you to start out on your journey to being a social media guru and author?
Truthfully, I was a VERY early adopter. It was the early 90s and my first online interaction ever was when I was in 6th grade in a chat room. Here I was at 6am, 12 year old me and two other men.
We started talking and I remember the guys pretty clearly: one was 50 (“50?,” I said. “That’s so old!”) and the other was in his mid 20s. Amazingly, that twenty-something had actually attended the same school as me and had the same teachers as me.
I knew from that point on that things were going to be different, and I was living in a social media world since before it even had a name. I had a few nicknames in school as a result of my early adoption (nobody at that time understood) but I knew there was going to be something amazing about to happen.
Who is the most inspirational person (or people) you’ve hung out with along the way and what did you learn from them?
I could date back to the early days when I would meet people online and then reconnect with them offline. That wasn’t easy for a teenager to do, especially with parents who had watchful eyes.
If there’s one person I really was inspired by in the early days, it would be my friend Dennis. We met through an application he coded as a teenager: a word scramble game for chat rooms. (I was a volunteer remote staff member on AOL in the mid 90s, and I believe I emailed him with praise or just for general support.)
We became very close, and it was awesome to see how he grew from introvert to a social butterfly thanks to social media. We went to the same university, and he became president of his Columbia University class. He went on to build one of the earliest Facebook apps that was later acquired by Slide.
Today, he’s building iOS apps and programming at one of the top financial analytics companies ever. I’m so proud to have known him. If he’s taught me anything, it’s to chase what you love.
Can you talk about what has been your highest moment professionally in the last 12 months?
I’m community manager for Namecheap and we’re currently doing some amazing work against SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act). Over the past three weeks, we’ve raised over $64,000 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation to fight against SOPA and PIPA legislation.
What has been your lowest moment in the last 12 months and how did you get through it?
Every so often, I run into these client engagements that fizzle because the client is so driven by directives such as “post on Twitter” and “post on Facebook” without understanding WHY one should do these things.
I started off a great engagement in the summer of 2011 with a really nice client. They provided an extensive list of “here’s what you should do for us,” but I consistently tried to push them into explaining why they needed it. What were their objectives? Clients? Partnerships?
No matter how hard I tried, I didn’t get any insights, and they were too busy to discuss their true objectives with me. Ultimately, that relationship ended up taking a plunge, and I can’t say I felt great about it, since I was truly trying my best to be diligent about their needs.
The engagement (and many of these failed relationships that happened with colleagues of mine) turned into a post of Why Most Social Media Departments Fail, and that was actually the best post on my blog in 2011. :)
Any advice to people starting out?
For social media marketing? Do something amazing and work REALLY hard at it. It’s very hard to start today when everyone has 5-6 years of experience, but that’s not to say it’s not possible. It just needs a lot of nurturing and almost full time attention.
If you could hang out anywhere in the world where would you be and what would you be doing?
Well, the great thing about social media is that you can do it from anywhere you are, so I don’t think I’m looking to change my atmosphere that much!
We spend so much of our time on online social networks, where do you see the value in taking time to engage offline or around real world engagement with friends, followers and your peers?
I think that’s CRITICALLY important, actually. One of my best recommendations is to get to know these “influencers” face to face. It’s a topic I discuss on my blog pretty often. Without the personal connection, you’re just a name in the crowd, but if you took it a step further and really connected with someone offline, you’ll see that things happen.
You can follow Tamar on Twitter @tamar
Become the real world connector of social media professionals in your area…
If you’re keen to build your real world peer network and meet other local social media and digital marketing folk get onto uberlife or download the iPhone app free today and create social media hangouts to get people together to share ideas, swap stories and experiences over lunch, drinks or something else social.
